


red, amber, green

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen, M/M, Relationship Tension, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 01:17:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14177436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Stephen takes a risk he knows Ryan won't like.





	red, amber, green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luka/gifts).



“Stephen,” Abby said, still holding the torch on the shadowed edge of the tracks leading into the cave, “we should wait. You know that.”

 

“We don't have time for Ryan and the others to get here,” Stephen said briskly, knotting the string retrieved from one capacious pocket of his ugly trousers to a suitable branch. Saplings grew thickly around the entrance to the cave, probably seeking water, and as Abby tried to look past the tree roots dangling from the bank above she wondered uneasily if that gleam she thought she could see was moisture or anomaly.

 

“They’ll have cleared the crash,” Abby tried. “They must be right behind us.” Her mobile phone's signal had stuttered to death half an hour ago, ending Claudia's intermittent updates from the convoy with the rest of the team - stuck behind a messy three-car crash on the M4 Abby’s little Mini had only just evaded. But Abby was fairly confident she knew what Claudia's texts would consist of now; increasingly profane reminders that they were not the Scooby gang and couldn't just charge headfirst into danger whenever they fancied.

 

Stephen, however, appeared to have decided that plausible deniability gave him latitude to act on the ground, and without anything more concrete than Schroedinger's Orders to go on Abby couldn't stop him.

 

She glanced down at the crumpled sheet of paper in her hand, a makeshift poster on plain A4 paper with a small boy’s school picture on it. They'd met the amateur searchers for Eddie Williams as they entered the woods, a group of worried locals in waterproof jackets and sturdy boots heading back to the village hall to talk to the police about the search.

 

Abby had lied and said they were just hiking. They'd promised to keep an eye out for the little boy, but Abby doubted that the searchers had realised exactly how much Abby and Stephen had already guessed about Eddie’s disappearance. Anomalies were bright and shiny; Eddie wouldn’t be the first child to follow the glitter. There were little footprints in the mud at the edge of the cave to tell them that he had.

 

“It’s not deep,” Stephen said, as if conceding something. “It doesn’t go anywhere. If it did it’d have a gate.”

 

“Well, it definitely goes somewhere now.” Abby sighed. “Back-up -”

 

“I have back-up,” Stephen said, with a tense, quick smile. “I have you.”

 

“Stephen,” Abby said, and pinched the bridge of her nose. Eddie Williams’ buck-toothed smile and wonky glasses danced before her closed eyes. “Half an hour. You have half an hour.”

 

“Fine,” Stephen said.

 

“Promise me you’ll come back.” Abby folded her arms. “If you don’t, I’ll come in after you.”

 

“At least one of us should stay out here.”

 

“Yeah, so - be back in half an hour.”

 

They stared at each other for a few long seconds.

 

“If you get eaten by something and it gets me too, I don’t have to tell Ryan why I didn’t stop you,” Abby said, unblinking. “I’ll take that.”

 

The fine line of Stephen’s mouth hardened.

 

“ _Promise_ ,” Abby repeated.

 

“I promise,” Stephen said, with no grace at all, and turned and ducked into the cave.

 

 

Twenty minutes later, Ryan stamped up to Abby. “How long did you give him?”

 

“Half an hour,” Abby said, and checked her watch for the sixth time. “He has ten minutes left.” She handed Ryan the sheet of paper by way of explanation; he glanced at it and handed it back to her.

 

 _If I had been alone I would have gone myself_ , Abby didn’t say, but she knew they were both thinking it. There was no-one from the anomaly project who wouldn’t, even Connor, who still made plaintive noises about his allergies and sneezed unconvincingly when dragged outdoors. Abby wasn’t sure about Lester, who had come no closer than Rex’s crap to the realities of the anomalies on the ground, but she was fairly sure he would have walked into that cave too.

 

“Where did you leave the others?” Abby asked.

 

“Claudia’s having a word with the police,” Ryan said, and nodded at Lyle, who was standing a few metres away, poised to move. “Connor and Cutter are sitting in the back of her car. Supervised.”

 

Abby winced, anticipating a future shouting match. Lyle nodded back at Ryan, and he and Blade and Finn moved off into the cave, melting into the darkness.

 

“New rule,” Ryan said five minutes later, as they stared at the mouth of the cave. “If you drive yourself to an anomaly, you collect one of the lads before you go.”

 

Abby looked at him. He didn’t look back at her. “Fair,” she said.

 

He looked down at her at last, and a faint, humourless quirk pulled at his mouth. “It’s not that I don’t trust you to be sensible, unless it’s got something to do with that flying gecko of yours. It’s that none of these other bastards know their limits.”

 

Abby set her teeth in her lower lip and worried it. “Stephen -”

 

Her voice failed; she looked down at the ground, scuffing the toe of her boot along the rotting leaves and damp soil.

 

“He didn’t mean -” she tried again, and found herself wordless once more.

 

Ryan met her eyes. She looked away first.

 

 

Stephen took thirty-five minutes, in the end, but looking at his slightly hunched shoulders, rigid neck and defensive expression, Abby was inclined to chalk the delay up to a lecture from Lyle on the other side of the anomaly. He was carrying Eddie Williams, dirty and scratched and clinging to Stephen with terror but plainly alive and well.

 

Abby let out a breath. So did Ryan.

 

Stephen’s eyes flashed to Ryan, and guilt and apology spread over that unfairly beautiful face. He untied the string from his belt loop and started towards Ryan.

 

Then a car driven by Kermit - Abby could tell, even without looking behind her; it was the propensity for handbrake stops and driving into spaces that were far too small for any reasonable person that did it - pulled into the clearing. Claudia had shoved open the car door before it even came to a halt, and launched into a first-class bollocking before the door slammed behind her.

 

Stephen and Ryan turned away from each other. Abby felt a terrible headache coming on.

 

***

 

Ryan had been quiet at the pub. Stephen supposed he had no right to expect anything else, but Ryan hadn’t addressed more than five words to him. Abby had been watching them when she thought she wouldn’t be seen and looking away like she was worried about them, at least until Blade and Finn had dragged her away to teach Connor how to play darts properly. It was all for the best; Abby would take charge there and prevent bodily harm occurring, and she wouldn’t bother Stephen about his relationship with his boyfriend, who hated caves, disapproved of anomalies, and had very clearly stated objections to Stephen going off on his own in a dangerous situation. Stephen had managed to combine all of the above.

 

Stephen had two pints and decided he’d had enough. Ryan drank nothing, probably because the last time Finn had been unleashed on this particular civilian population he had disgraced himself by dancing on a table and then breaking and been thrown out by the barmaid, a stocky and intimidating redhead named Helena who treated Lacey, Abby and Claudia like princesses and the rest of them like obnoxious boy cousins.

 

Stephen hung around with the others for a bit, unfocussing while Claudia left and Lyle departed a convenient length of time afterwards,  mustering a smile and wave for Abby as she towed Connor out of the pub, clearly no longer in a fit state to play darts.

 

Soon enough, the place was half-empty; Stephen only noticed when he jolted out of his daydream to notice Ryan standing over him. There was something almost affectionate on his face, a softening to it.

 

“Come on, Hart,” he said. “Falling asleep there.”

 

Stephen nodded, feeling choked for words somehow. He levered himself out of the seat, and stumbled as his legs woke up. Ryan caught him by the arm and anchored him until he found his feet.

 

“I’m sorry,” Stephen said when they were outside, the cold snapping at their breath, stealing it in pale clouds against the dark night and orange streetlight.

 

“I know,” Ryan said.

 

Stephen tried to organise his thoughts into something coherent. Ambling down the street wasn’t helping; he kept wondering if Ryan meant them to go home together, or if he was just waiting for Stephen to sort himself out and return alone to the empty flat he hadn’t spent a night in for weeks.

 

“I just,” he began, scrubbed a hand over his head, and glanced at Ryan. “I didn’t want to leave the kid in there alone. A few more minutes - he could have died.”

 

“I know,” Ryan said, and looked away again, jaw tight. “I understand.” He sighed, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “It’s my fault. I should have made sure someone was in the car with you and Abby.”

 

“We crashed out in twenty-two seconds,” Stephen pointed out. It was a record; Connor had made a note of it. “And we’re all still making this up as we go along.”

 

“Still.”

 

“And I didn’t have to go in there,” Stephen pressed on, painfully. “I could have… waited. Abby told me I should.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

 

“No, you couldn’t have done,” Ryan said, a little rueful. “There was the boy to worry about.”

 

Stephen nodded. He kicked a bottle cap along the pavement with his toe.

 

“Save it for special occasions, will you, Stephen?” Ryan said quietly.

 

“Yeah,” Stephen answered. Something twitched at his mouth that wasn’t quite a smile. He thought of Abby earlier, making him swear he’d come back. “Promise.”

 

Ryan held out a hand to him.

 

He took it, and then, on impulse, pulled Ryan into a hug. Ryan’s arms went round him without hesitation; Stephen closed his eyes, and pressed his face into Ryan’s neck, smelling the edge of lemon shower gel, of sweat, of Tom.

 

“I wouldn’t have done it if there’d been a better way,” he said.

 

“I know,” Ryan repeated.

 

“Just wish I hadn’t…”

 

“Hadn’t what?”

 

“I know you hate caves. And you hate it when I wander off.”

 

Ryan almost laughed. “I’ll live.”

 

“Let me make it up to you,” Stephen said, and anxiety surged in his blood. “Just… let me have a chance.”

 

“Stephen,” Ryan said with resignation, and kissed him for a long moment that left Stephen breathless. In the short seconds afterwards, chests heaving for air and foreheads pressed together, Ryan curled a hand around the back of Stephen’s neck and stroked a thumb along the space for the carotid behind the ear. “I’m not going to break up with you because you did one thing you knew would make me worry. You did it for a good reason. I would have done it too.” He sighed. “It’s not like you’re Temple. You can take care of yourself.”

 

Stephen doubted this almost as much as he knew Claudia did.

 

“We’re fine,” Ryan said. “It’s all right.”

 

Stephen felt weight lift from his shoulders; he leaned into Ryan. “Then can we go home?”

 

“Yeah, Hart,” Ryan said, with boundless affection. “That’s where we’re going." He turned his head sideways slightly and kissed Stephen's temple. "You’re standing right next to my car.”

 

***

 

Abby squinted at him in the coffee room at work the next morning, and then burst into one of her bright, surprising smiles.

 

"You're okay, then," she said, clearly pleased - though Stephen had no idea what had made her so cheerful. "Good. I'm glad."

 

"That's not cryptic at all," Stephen said, smiling himself in response, and Abby grinned.

 

"Don't worry about it," she said airily. "It's not important."

 

Stephen found he was smiling all the way to his desk.

 

 


End file.
